Kai worked hard, or seemed to, for the rest of the day. She turned many pages of binders, moved her eyes over a hundred intake forms, and all the while planned her confrontation with Mara. Evasions. Pursuit. Mara’s collapse, and the slow determination Kai would help her build to tell Jace the truth, or some of it at least.
Unless Mara really meant to frame Kai for everything. In which case their conversation might take a very different path.
Near sunset she clocked out and headed uphill toward Mara’s house, a few blocks from her own. Kai and Mara rarely met outside work, but Mara’d helped out when the pipes in Kai’s basement burst, and Kai’d leant Mara a hand moving in. She remembered the way, and soon stood on the sidewalk before Mara’s pale purple two-story. Porch ghostlights clicked on as night deepened, timer-driven. The lights cast dancing shadows on the lawn.
No signs of life. Kai checked her watch. A little after seven. Mara wouldn’t be home for an hour yet, at best. She removed a pad from her purse, scrawled a brief note—“Mara, need to see you, urgent, family business, Kai”—ambiguous enough she hoped its meaning would be safe. She opened Mara’s mailbox to slip the note in, but the box was crammed with newsprint, letters, and ads. She folded her message double, sealed it with a drop of wax, and was searching for a cranny into which the paper might fit when her mind caught up with her eyes.
The mailbox held two days’ mail at least. Mara must have forgot to pick up her mail—or else she never came home after her meeting with the Craftswoman. With Ms. Kevarian. The meeting Kai thought had finished too fast.
The empty house watched Kai from behind the fence.
Hells, Mara’s wards probably wouldn’t let her pass. She touched the fence latch, felt no electric tingle, heard no warning bell. Maybe the wards only went off if you opened the gate.
She pressed down on the latch, and stepped into Mara’s yard.
No lightning. No thunder. Not even a dog’s bark. Silence and wind. She walked up the yard. Front door locked. Stepping-stones circled around to the back, and she followed them. One stone shifted beneath her feet.
Orange trees grew in the backyard. Kai’d always been jealous of Mara’s trees; her own house’s last owners had no interest in horticulture, save for the psychotropic variety. She picked a low-hanging orange, thought about peeling it, decided not to, and continued to the rear porch. Through glass sliding doors Kai saw the kitchen, marble countertops and cabinets of pale imported wood. A percolator on the stove. Clean counters, dishes racked. She tried the door, out of curiosity.
It opened.
A chill ran up her spine and down her arms. Mara wouldn’t leave her door unlocked. Then again, anyone might leave her door unlocked. People ran out of the house, forgetful, stuffing a boxed lunch into a shoulder bag, spilling coffee on their hands.
Mara didn’t forget things, she rarely ran, and she was never late.
Kai stepped into the empty kitchen.
She didn’t see anything wrong or out of place. One dish in the sink. Crumbs. Dried purple smear of jam on a dull knife. Three tiny black flies stuck in the jam.
Kai didn’t care for Claude’s God Wars historicals, all bluff and thunder and improbable heroics, but she did attend the occasional mystery play, and she’d read a detective novel Gavin lent her once. The murder she liked, but the clues bothered her. A detective in a kitchen could tell how long the occupant was gone from the relative staleness of bread crumbs. Kai couldn’t. But Mara kept a neat house, and hired maids to keep it neater. Burned her garbage, even, ever since a bad breakup in which her ex had stalked her through her trash. Dirty dishes in the sink could be another sign she hadn’t come home the night before. Or that she came home so late she lacked the energy to wash her breakfast dishes before bed.
Through the kitchen door Kai saw, on the couchside table, a small spiral-bound calendar, the kind with a new cartoon for each month. Days X-ed off. She’d come this far already. Might as well check the calendar, then get out. Stuff the letter in the mailbox and leave.
She slipped off her shoes, set them on the tile floor, and padded across the carpet into the living room. Here too she saw no signs of life. The strange order of a maid-cleaned house, that was all. Pillows propped in plush chairs. Wood surfaces dusted, polished. Thick carpet.
A closed house. A dead house.
She approached the couch, the end table, the calendar.
She heard a crack upstairs. Wood contracting, or expanding. Wind through an open window. But she hadn’t seen any open windows. “Mara?” As the echoes died she cursed herself for a fool. If someone else, something else, was here, now they knew her voice.
She picked up the calendar. Two neat lines crossed each day save for the last—yesterday’s X was half-complete, one diagonal slash. Mara marked the first half of the day in the morning, the second half returning, a weird habit, morbid, something she’d picked up from her mother. So she hadn’t come home last night. After meeting Ms. Kevarian. After framing Kai.
A carriage passed down the street outside. Wheels growled over gravel, and the horse’s tack jangled and rang.
Kai set the calendar down, and turned to leave.
The harness chimes receded, but the growl stayed. And the growl was nearer than the carriage wheels.
Kai looked up.
Two red eyes glimmered on the second floor. A great gold shape hunched on the banister, bared yellow teeth, and leapt.
Kai stumbled back, ran for the kitchen. The creature landed behind her, heavy and precise, four sharp taps on the carpet. Claws ripped over shag.
She skidded onto kitchen tile, grabbing for her shoes. The creature leapt. Kai swung her cane in a desperate arc, and struck something that yowled in pain. She scrambled for the door, halfrunning, half-falling. She’d left it open, thank whatever gods watched out for dumb burglars—she ran onto the empty porch, and spun to see red eyes and bared teeth and muscle under gold fur gathering again to leap. The growl rose to a cry like an angry child’s. She flailed for the door handle, found it, slammed the glass shut so hard she feared at first she might have broken the pane. But the glass did not break. The door closed, the child’s cry cut off, and the eyes’ red glow died.
The yard around Kai was carved gray, highlighted purple and orange by sunset through the trees. She did not move. She watched her own reflection in the glass, surrounded by porch furniture. The world throbbed. No. That was her.
A statue crouched on the kitchen floor: a cat the size of a foal, broad shouldered and detail perfect, fur distended by rippling muscles, dagger teeth bared. Stone claws pressed against the ceramic tile.
“Shit,” she said, and swore again, because she felt better swearing. “Ebenezer.” My security, Mara had joked. The perfect pet. There when I’m home, stone when I’m out. More loyal than most people I know, of any species.
Which solved the mystery of the open back door. If Kai had a pet lion, she might stop triple-checking her locks before she left, too.
Or not. Even Ebenezer could only do so much.
She’d dropped her cane, and bent to retrieve it. The cane’s head hung at a sharp angle from the shaft: it must have broken when she hit the cat. Inside, she saw a glint of metal.
Strange.
She twisted the cane further, and through the widening crack saw its core was webbed with silver wire. She couldn’t read the patterns, but she recognized Craftwork when she saw it.
Something hid inside her walking stick. A monitor, maybe. Simple medical Craft to keep her safe, help her heal.
Or not.
Night wind blew cold around her.
Mara might have stayed at work. Taken an unannounced vacation. Sickness. Death in the family.
She went up the mountain yesterday. She did not come down.
Kai took her orange from the table. The cat statue’s eyes seemed to follow her as she followed the stone path back to the front yard. She looked back, into the hole between its teeth.
Two blocks from Mara’s house, Kai took a last glance into her cane’s broken heart, and tossed it into a compost bin.